Re:Never written any code (Score 0)

I agree with you on some of your points. Especially regarding the quality issues you've mentioned. But, I'm really not sure it's necessary that the head firefox has ever written code in her life. It really depends on the long term goals of the product. Would coding experience be helpful if the long term goals were to stay true to the geek crowd, to have the ability to effectively communicate with them, while possibly keeping it a fairly exlusive product? Sure it would. But if the goal is to "spread firefox" I think other things may be more necessary. Marketing is necessary, legal knowledge is necessary, and being in the right circle of friends & investors may be necessary if you want funding. Keep in mind bittorrent is open source but it didn't stop a VC firm from investing $8 million for further development. Some of that development may be commercial, and I expect will be given the funding requirements. But it doesn't mean those who contributed to the initial source haven't benefited. I agree with you it's not 100% fair to leave some of the contributers out in the cold, but again, there are still benefits other than money as a result of that contribution. In regards to Firefox, it appears through their campaign they are looking for the latter. Which means to convince users they have a better product than the competition, i.e. marketing their product. As you've mentioned, due to some lapses in code, they'll probably lose some of the more advanced users who prefer different functionality and tighter code. However, when looking to serve the masses, I think Microsoft has proven that a company can do pretty well despite imperfections in code, and rather focusing their resources in marketing and other such means of obtaining customers.